Journalists at the Denver Post demonstrated some excellent uses of Twitter in their coverage of the massacre at the Century 16 theater in Aurora, Colo., Friday.

I was planning to write about hashtags today in my #twutorial series on how journalists should use Twitter, but I’ve pushed that one back to next week. Breaking news is one of the most important ways journalists can use Twitter, and the coverage of the shooting illustrated several things individual journalists and news organizations should do in covering a breaking story.

Tweet the unfolding story

This was perhaps the strongest aspect of the Post’s Twitter use during the shooting coverage. Several Post journalists tweeted from the scene of the theater, from where families waited for news about victims and from outside the suspect’s apartment. Reporter Jordan Steffen explained in an email:

Twitter was the most efficient and fastest way to keep readers updated on both the atmosphere of several locations and new information streaming in. The ability to quickly share quotes from friends of victims and others at the make shift memorial kept my followers and the Denver Post readers in touch with how the community was responding to the shooting.

In addition, during media briefings Twitter served as a way to instantly send important developments and information to readers and staff back at the newsroom.

When I was sent out to cover the developments at the shooting suspect’s apartment Saturday morning, I live-tweeted the activities. This event was being closely watched by the national media, as well as the local residents. With such a massive emergency crew representation, everyone knew that this was the day that would begin the dismantling process of his booby trapped unit.

Turn tweets into stories

I hear questions occasionally from journalists who wonder why they would break news on Twitter instead of on their websites. It’s not an either/or choice. The Post fed tweets into its news site using a ScribbleLive liveblog. The tweets also gave editors material to update stories, as Kristen explained:

Our news director, Kevin Dale, was the early morning editor manning the newsroom and he aggregated my tweets to create the unfolding story. Between my tweets, occasional phone calls or emails, and our online staff, we were able to continuously update the online story to give our readers a detailed timeline.

As Brian Stelter recounted after the Joplin tornado, journalists covering breaking stories can and should tweet their stories 140 characters at a time, producing a riveting narrative for the Twitter audience and giving editors back in the newsroom the notes they need to craft great deadline stories.

A side note: Clearly, many other journalists were covering this job and doing great work as well. I am focusing here on the work of my Post colleagues, but I’ll recognize the work of others with this tweet from Stelter:

Accuracy

Post reporters avoided the reckless speculation about which of multiple people by the same name might be the suspect. Steve Myers of Poynter wrote about journalists who reported and tweeted irresponsibly when they didn’t know yet who the suspect was.

You tweet the unfolding story, but you don’t relax your standards of accuracy. Jordan explained:

I treat any information in my tweets like facts that I put in a story, they either come directly from a credible source — such as Chief Dan Oates — or people at the scene. All journalist standards and practices apply to every tweet.

Dan has compiled lists of media Twitter accounts, which helped in sorting the journalists from the many people tweeting about the attack. “My local media lists and national media lists on Twitter were invaluable to finding information quickly,” he explained in an email. “Following the hashtag #theatershooting proved very difficult.”

You promote a lot of your own content on Twitter, but highlight valuable content from other sources as well. The point of tweeting links is not promotion, but serving your followers.

Use hashtags

Though Dan found the #theatershooting hashtag overwhelming for search purposes because of all the tweets using it, he and other Post journalists used the #theatershooting hashtag in their own tweets, helping them reach the larger audience following that hashtag.

Angi Carter of the New Haven Register pitched in on curation efforts (more on that below) and found the following hashtags being used: #Holmes, #Oslo, #RIPJessica, #RIP, #Aurora, #Colorado, #prayersforvictims, #moviemassacre, #Batman, #TDKR and #darknight.

Each time you find a hashtag in a tweet related to a breaking story, click to see whether it’s helpful. Some will be used just once or a few times. Others might lead you to many helpful tweets. Use the hashtags with the location feature of advanced Twitter search and you can find tweets using the hashtag from near the scene (though not everyone enables location in their Twitter accounts, so you will miss some).

Update: In the comments, Gannett’s Jodi Gersh credits @9news with creating the #theatershooting hashtag. Which prompts me to add this note to media: Don’t try to use competing hashtags in a story like this. If one outlet starts a good hashtag like #theatershooting, other media should use it.

Check tweets of news figures

When people in news stories use Twitter, their tweets can provide clues to their personalities and their actions leading up to the news event you’re covering. The final tweet of shooting victim Jessica Ghawi made a powerful closing quote for the Post’s profile.

Livetweet routinely

You don’t just start tweeting this effectively on a story this big. This kind of performance grows from routine use of Twitter on breaking stories. “I live-tweet any major breaking news story that I am assigned to,” Kristen said. Jordan added: “I routinely use Twitter on breaking news assignments. Some examples of past coverage include the Lower North Fork Fire, the Waldo Canyon Fire, Occupy Denver and several other daily assignments.”

Livetweeting builds audience

Livetweeting a breaking story boosts followers for staff Twitter accounts and drives traffic to your main site (without needing to throw a link into every tweet). Kristen explained:

In four hours, I gained 100 new Twitter followers because the nature of the story of was so suspenseful. It drove national traffic to a.) my Twitter account, and b.) denverpost.com.

Follow the story

Each reporter is covering one piece of a story this big. Twitter helps you keep up on the whole story, as Kristen explained:

Since I was so consumed in my “corner” of the story, it was hard to keep up with what was happening at the other locations and what new developments the Post had uncovered. I ended up relying quite heavily on both my colleagues’ and the @denverpost Twitter feeds to keep myself informed so that I was constantly afloat to the large picture story.

Post journalists’ tweets

I’ve gathered a sampling of the hundreds of tweets from Post journalists in covering this story of the weekend. These are tweets from the Post’s Ryan Parker, whose Twitter bio says he is “More Peter Parker than Spider-Man.” We’ll start with one from the afternoon before:

Thanks for including a couple of my tweets in your story, Steve. In the interest of accuracy, I’m not a member of the Post’s photo dept so it’s probably inaccurate to describe me as a photojournalist it his context. I’m actually the guy who was running @denverpost for about 75% of the first 48 hours there in my capacity as an online news editor. I’m really flattered you thought so much of our social media efforts. Our team was unstoppable and amazing. Truly proud to be part of it.

Storify coverage of massacre

I will write a separate post later in this series about using Storify to curate tweets and other digital content. But I also should note in this post that two members of our new curation team, Angi Carter and Karen Workman, pitched in Friday to curate tweets and other content relating to the theater massacre. Mandy Jenkins, digital projects editor, got the curation effort started with a quick early-morning Storify of late-night tweets from the scene and other content.

Angi and Karen collaborated on a Friday curation of content throughout the day and then did separate curations of social media and professional media reports about the victims and the suspect.

Buffy Andrews of the York Daily Record also pitched in, using Geofeedia and Storify to curate social media coming from around the theaters. Buffy elaborated by email:

One thing that’s been neat is being able to RSS Geofeed onto site. … The good side is that folks get to see everything coming from that area. The bad side is that they might see stuff unrelated to the event or inappropriate language, photos etc. But I make it clear that this content is not being filtered or moderated. If they choose to look at the feed, they can. If not, the Storify curation does not include the inappropriate stuff. I think there’s a place for both of these and the reader can decide. …

The theater Storify has more than 1,600 views. I think that’s a record for me. And I did publicize it via notifying those included. I found that those folks often retweeted the link and many of them wrote to thank me. That was kind of weird being thanked because I didn’t feel as though there was anything to thank me for. But the people felt I was helping to get the word out and were grateful.

Possible updates

I have asked other Post staffers to share their lessons and techniques from their coverage of the theater attack. I will update as I receive responses from them. If you come back to check for updates, I will add them at the end here, rather than weaving them into their appropriate sections.

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